Louis Kincaid, once exiled from Michigan's law enforcement community, gets an unexpected offer to wear a badge again, as part of an elite homicide squad for the Michigan State Police. But his return to his home comes at the bidding of the man, Mark Steele, who once set out to destroy him. With mistrust still simmering, Louis takes on the ice-cold murder case of two small boys left in a wooden box in Michigan's remote Upper Peninsula over two decades earlier. But when the white-hot recent murder of a mega-church minister forces the team in another direction, Louis finds himself on the hunt for two killers, at odds again with Captain Steele and haunted by memories of his own damaged childhood.